Bioarchaeology of Petra's North Ridge
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Overview
abstract
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The mysterious Nabataeans, who built the magnificent city of Petra, have long fascinated scholars and the public. But the Nabataeans left no surviving literature, leaving scholars with a few documentary sources written by others about the Nabataeans and a handful of laconic inscriptions written in their language. The documentary evidence is also contradictory: the earliest sources describe the Nabataeans as pastoral nomads, while later ancient writers describe them as completely sedentary and urbanized. All these accounts have been questioned as biased on various grounds by scholars, who are divided on the question. By the 1st century B.C., the Nabataeans had established their impressive capital city of Petra, with monumental public architecture, diversified economy, and a large, settled population typical of state-level societies. While pastoral nomadism may have continued as an important element in the Nabataean economy, it appears that one segment of their population had made a shift to sedentism. To explore how the success of this subsistence change, the project is collecting bioarchaeological and material cultural evidence from rock-cut shaft tombs of the 1st centuries BC/AD on Petra?s North Ridge. These are not the famed fa?ade tombs of Petra?s elite but modest tombs likely used by extended families of the non-elite population. Although looted, our excavation has demonstrated that these tombs contain significant human remains (including articulated skeletons) and much material culture. First, evidence from the human skeletal remains will demonstrate the success of urban life for Petra?s residents. Evidence of pathological lesions related to nutritional deficiencies, infection, and trauma will outline their levels of health and disease. In addition, dietary reconstruction using stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes will identify relative contributions of different food sources to the diet. These analyses will be combined with a paleodemographic profile of the tomb samples which can clarify population dynamics such as fertility and mortality profiles. Coupled with identifying successful urban adaptation, evidence from the tombs will also help clarify who was involved in maintaining the urban center. Mortuary and genetic diversity in the North Ridge Tombs can indicate whether a diverse group of individuals, with differing beliefs in the treatment of the deceased or displaying greater than expected diversity of metric and non-metric epigenetic traits, settled in the city. This assessment will be coupled with strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of these individuals to identify if any were raised in different region(s) with different water sources than Petra. Immigrants into a region can be identified by comparing their dental enamel isotopic signatures to a ?local? value generally established by analyzing dental enamel of local fauna for strontium or published data on water sources for oxygen. Although a sample (MNI = 70) has been recovered from the tombs, another season of fieldwork is required to obtain a more statistically valid sample (i.e. <100). Additional small mammal dental samples (N=20) will be collected to refine the local biologically available strontium.
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